American Tactical Shooting Association

“A Gun Person in an Academic World”

By: Glenn E. Meyer, PhD

Note: The author was born in New York City and is full
professor in the Psychology Department at Trinity University in San Antonio,
Texas.He received his doctorate in
1975 and has written numerous professional articles and books in the areas of
visual perception, cognition and statistics.He recently has been studying the influence of weapons type used in
defensive gun usages on simulated jury decisions.A convert to the world of defensive firearms, he has been an NTI
practitioner & has studied with several well known trainers.

I consider
myself a touch of a rare breed in a couple of ways. I am a gun activist and
supporter of the Second Amendment and am vocal about in a liberal arts college
environment.Second, I’m not a dyed in
the wool conservative. As a colleague put it: “You’re a strange breed of cat”.
I am rather well-known for being a 2nd advocate and confuse folks who think I
am necessarily right wing. Certainly, not as bloody internet battles attest to.
One department member, in fact, defended me in a conversation she related. This
causes confusion but leads to more credibility of my support of the 2nd. I get
asked by clearly left leaning faculty about guns and several want to go to
range and learn about guns. I am also clearly much more tactically trained than
my most of my conservative gun buddies and the typical CHL. I’m the one that
shoots IDPA while they punch paper sedately.

How did this
journey start? I grew up in New York City. Personal firearms ownership was very
difficult and I cannot think of knowing anyone in my immediate circle that
owned a firearm.There was Uncle Jack
who did go shoot pheasants and had a shotgun. I did spit out little lead
pellets at his house when we ate his kill but that wasn’t really being a gun
guy. My uncles did serve in the military. One was lucky enough to be a pilot at
Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 and another was one of the GIs surrounded at the Battle
of the Bulge but they evidenced no interest in guns later in life. Nor did my
cousins.I did really like toy guns and
shooting a pump 22S on the boardwalk but that’s it.

I can’t say
that we had the conceptualization of the 2nd Amendment as really being
important. Perhaps it was an anachronism like the 3rd Amendment. Defending
yourself against others was for fists. My dad boxed. I took a dilettante’s
interest in Judo. I’ve thought about this a bit. Given the experience of the
Holocaust, why weren’t we interested in personal defense? It is a cliché in the
gun world to assume Jews should be ardent 2nd Amendment advocates. Several
factors are in play. First, most of us didn’t come from a gun culture. When you
don’t have a hammer or never used a hammer, then you don’t even know what a
nail is. It didn’t enter our minds. As I said before, guns were tools of the
government and we certainly knew that governments may not be our friend and why
emulate criminals? It, on the surface, would seem that if we removed guns from
criminals we would be safer. Getting our own guns – why?It seemed reasonable that the protection of
a democratic (small D) state would protect our rights more than gun ownership.
Civil rights legislation and lobbying got us some protection of our rights to
employment and entry to education. My mother had to use a false name to get a
job as her “Jewish” sounding name would have led to her being fired or not
hired. Certainly, the 2nd Amendment didn’t seem a solution to this kind of
discrimination.Legislation and social
action seemed to work. When crime got bad, we moved to the suburbs.

My views on
the matter changed dramatically as I aged. After graduate school and a
post-doc, I moved to Portland, Oregon.Gun ownership was much easier but one needs a seminal incident to induce
a personal paradigm shift. There were several. First, a student called me at
home to tell me that because of a grade I had given him, he was going to kill
himself on my front lawn (he had a drug problem which led to bad
performance).Seemed reasonable that
someone killing himself might take a whack at me and family. Of course, I
called the cops and the school. So SWAT teams and bodyguards rushed to my place
– NOT!The law said: “Well, when he
shows up – call us!” Might they increase drive-by frequency on our street that
night? Uh – no!The school – fill out a
form – Monday. This is not cool. So we get out the tennis racket and ski poles
to fight our lives. Nothing happened, though and the kid dropped out.

A second
nasty incident also was formative. In between marriages (sigh), I was invited
by a young lady to go to a Yo-Yo Ma concert. He is a dude that plays the cello,
very exciting and quite the intellectual event (Yeah Right, but a date is a
date).At that point in time, the
Portland area was home to some virulent Aryan nation types. They had been
trained by some California neo-Nazis to pull up to a minority, shout racial
epithets and if the person responded, to jump out and beat them. They would
claim mutual combat as a defense as the person gave them the finger back. An
Ethiopian immigrant was killed in this manner, leading to sentences and a
successful major lawsuit against these organizations. So, going from the
parking ramp, to the concert – up pulls a car of these guys – they yell at me –
Hey, Are You a Jew! Tactical Response – say no and run for the theater. Works
OK but, you sure feel helpless.

Third, a good
friend of mine was a professor of Eastern Asian history. Two things happened to
him. First, his wife’s ex-husband did the psycho act. Second, he invited a
controversial (leftist) speaker to campus. This was related to the Viet Nam war
and led to some pretty frightening vandalism and death threats from what were
annoyed ‘operators’ of that era.My
buddy was a pretty good martial artist, big, Harley riding, scary looking,
knife guy, etc. He decided it was time to buy a gun. He got a SW 640 – the
stainless 38 SPL snubbie as a concealed option. He learned how to shoot it and
practiced at a local range which was pretty upscale. Unlike Texas ranges I
shoot at now where a cease fire is called for goats on the range and you have
to step over fire ant hills, Portland ranges have coffee bars.We talked and I decided that it was time to
be a touch more proactive in taking care of myself. So I tried it and I was
hooked. Being a ‘scholar’, it seemed to me that one should study and I signed
up for the NRA Personal Protection which would qualify me for a CCW permit. You
could just have taken a two hour course – some of them were pretty crappy
though.The admissions dean at my
school did that (hey – another academic gun guy?) and the instructor
demonstrated gun safety by blasting a 1911 over the heads of the class – oops!
My class was quality and we shot SW 3rd generation 9mms. In our class, I was
introduced to the great debates for the CCW permit holder:

1.A guy is stealing your VCR – should you
charge down the stairs, racking your shotgun and then shoot him dead?

2. You are in
Burger Barn and a robbery starts. A gun is pulled on the cashier and you stand
up, bellow the warrior’s creed and open fire with your steely eyed dealer of
death head shot marksmanship.

The
instructors tried to make us thing about the pros and cons of various actions.
This debate still goes on today on the Internet and in the world of FOF.

As a
professor-type, I decided to read and study on the issue. I read gun books by
gurus and scholarly books on the history of guns, gun rights and gun control. I
became firmly convinced that the Second Amendment existed because of two core
fundamental issues: The right of citizens to protect themselves from evil-doers
and the right of citizens to be able to resist tyranny. Also, I as shot more,
the sense of personal empowerment was different from most of my experiences
before.

I also did
not hide my new interests at work in Oregon. In class, I might casually mention
that I shoot. I told my friends. While Lewis and Clark was a quite ‘liberal’
liberal arts school, I suffered no shunning or disdain from my colleagues. One
reason is clearly that I’m socially liberal and was not seen as a conservative.
I broke the mold of the gun advocate being a hide bound conservative (no
offense to anyone). In fact, the students were quite interested. I taught an
advanced statistics class and for our end of the semester celebration, the
class went to the range. We rented guns and shot. This led to a major story in
the school newspaper: “Glenn Meyer Leads Psych Majors Shooting”. The story
described our outing in detail (the author was in class and went on to be a
lawyer). It had a big picture of me in front of a group of humanoid targets
with some nice COM groups. The story ended: “Lewis and Clark College had just
been witness to the baptism of a handful of new gun enthusiasts. A day such as
this I thought I would never see at L&C has materialized before my eyes!”

That year, I
saw a job ad for Trinity University in San Antonio. Trinity was a good school
and offered the possibility of a step up and I applied. I think firearms were
crucial in getting the job. In the department, then there were two good old
boys. Hunting and fishing were more important than the job to them. When I was
interviewed – would I fit in? After all, to two TX boys, I was an alien – a New
Yorker by birth. So, they asked me what I liked to do for fun. Perhaps, I like
the ballet and reading obscure Victorian novels. I mentioned that I pistol shot
a bit. DAMN! – a trip to their lease was arranged. This panicked a female
faculty member who thought that I was bowing to their male dominance hierarchy
and conforming to get the job. She fearfully wandered the halls, worrying that
the good old boys would shoot the candidate. Anyway we went out to tactically
deal with the dreaded beer can and jugs of water. The boys brought a Glock 23
and a 7.65 Luger. Given the people I’ve meet, I’m not a super shot but certainly
I out shot the boys and I got the job.

Universities
are seen as antigun pits of liberal weirdoes but Trinity and Lewis and Clark
weren’t the case or at least were accepting.Arriving in Texas, I quickly found out that some faculty were gun types
and at my instigation, we formed a solid group of shooters. We hunt together as
three of them own contiguous ranch properties and shot together. I’ve gotten
one of them to go to IDPA matches. Can’t get them to seriously train though.
This is frustrating. Lots of gun rag talk about equipment but won’t do the
tactical thing. I have a theory about that for another day. Why don’t people
train? I do tease them with columns from Clint Smith about fat computer science
range commandos.

Again,
universities and guns – The University of Texas at Austin – home of hippies,
leftists and God only knows what nightmares to the standard RKBA person led to
another epiphany. When I got to San Antonio, I picked up a pamphlet on the UT
continuing educations courses. Perhaps, there would be a course on wine, basket
weaving, depressing cinema or farmhouse cheeses of America (TX does have a
growing and well respected set of cheese artisans and I am expert in their
selection). However, there was a course on handgun basics from Karl Rehn of
KRTraining. Huh? So I signed up and now am the graduate of his Advanced
Tactical sequences, NRA instructor course, and his guest instructors from
Insights and OPS.From knowing these
folks, I became involved in the now defunct Tactics List, met John Frazer of
the NRA and got my name sent to Don Kates and was invited to the Academics for
The Second Amendment Meeting where I met a large number of progun scholars.
That led me be interviewed by the Newhouse Newspaper syndicate on the
personality of gun owners. It was interesting that several locales of the paper
printed factual versions of the story but the New Orleans paper had an
inflammatory headline. Through Kates, I was asked to write several pieces for
the Encyclopedia of Guns in American
Society (ABC-CLIO ).

At the
Academic for the Second Amendment meeting, I got to shoot some fully auto guns
- great fun, silly NFA.I passed on the
Joe Olsen’s 50 BMG as I was nursing a recovering broken wrist. A 50 AE casing
from a pistol did bounce off the side of the lane and bop me in the head, even
though I was far back. Ouch!

Through the
Insights mailing list and my scholarly big mouth, I was invited to the NTI
which I regard as a life changing experience as a gun scholar, shooter and
citizen.

At school, I
am overtly pro-RKBA. I mention that I shoot in class; I use Lott’s analysis of
CCW laws and crime reduction for examples of experimental design in class. I
designed a statistics tutorial web site for a major textbook company and used
Lott in that. I have gun related posters in my office. I have corrected major
introductory psychology books that I have reviewed when they wandered off
factual truth regarding self-defense or violence.

We started a
gun related research program. Our psychology students have to engage in
research. While my core area is cognitive psychology and visual perception, I
found students were really interested in the firearms research. We studied
student and faculty attitudes towards firearms and started a long series of
experiments on the effects of weapons appearance on jury decisions. Does your
AR-15 influence a jury? Karl Rehn of KRTraining was a guest shooter in some of
our video tapes that we used in the trial simulation. This line of study led to
several papers at the American Society for Criminology meetings. This is the
major meeting for gun related work and you can see Gary Kleck, John Lott, Don
Kates, Gary Mauser and quite a few other progun researchers. Their work has
been crucial in the battle for gun rights. While some folk really don’t like
utilitarian arguments for the Second Amendment, the research is useful to
convince folks. Just the other day, I got an e-mail from a Glock Talker asking
for such reference for a legislative hearing. You can also see the antigun
research and knowledge is power. Students are co-authors with me. One nice
Jewish female student became quite the gun enthusiast and submitted a paper to
the Psi Chi Honors Society meeting and won a prize of several hundred dollars.
A copy of the award is on my bulletin board. Her parents took me out to dinner
and gave me a gun book. I’ve found quite a few female students to be
interested. Shocking to some, many of them are from a liberal background. One
of my best works and gun believers was a gay woman.I think from observing them on the range that they feel the sense
of personal empowerment that skill with a firearm gives them.

I found the
school supportive. I managed to get them to send Ayoob’s LFI-1 course for
research purposes. They funded me to go to the NTI. The campus cops asked me to
be a terrorist/active shooter opponent for them as I mentioned before. A
picture of me in tactical vest and carrying a firestick with the officers is on
my door, next to the firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero / Iwo Jima pairing.

We are now
starting or in the midst of two more research projects. The first concerns the
role of race in DGUs (defensive gun use). The Diallo shooting generated a great
deal of research about what factors may contribute to mistaken police
shootings. While certainly controversial to the gun world, some studies suggest
that people are more likely to make racially based decisions in a shoot/no
shoot. However, this is with a college sample and generalization is difficult.
One study with police found no effect of race. Another found that police were
hesitant to shoot females even though they were at risk. We are looking at
whether the race of a burglar or homeowner influences a jury decision about the
righteousness of a DGU. Maybe it shouldn’t – but does it? Second, we are
tooling up to study altruism in the gun carrying, trained population. 2/25/05
will be particularly relevant as in Tyler, TX a CHL lost his life to a rampage
shooter while saving the life of others. The debate about intervention is
clearly central to that incident.

I do not hide
my gun rights advocacy. We have a school wide mailing list and we get into
political discussions. Recently, a conservative friend of mine posted that the
development of the Pink Pistols, Harvard Gun Club (http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~volokh/guns.html)
and Second Amendment Sisters (http://www.2asisters.org/)
indicated that politically correct leftist domination of college campuses was
on the decline. This annoyed a PC professor who denied it somewhat. Thus I
posted:

“While it may
not be common knowledge – the support for the 2nd Amendment is well known in
some gay and feminist circles. There is a fairly well known gay 2nd Amendment
group – the Pink Pistols. Several liberal arts colleges have branches of the
Second Amendment Sisters. The literature on feminist oriented self defense
literature is growing. I have a list of works that I used in a seminar last semester.
I have heard presentations at conferences from the feminist proponents of the
2nd Amendment. Clearly in the feminist mode but their interest in the 2nd
amendment usually flummoxes those of the left who see the issue as a totem for
being a conservative loony or those of the right who think that those of the
left who prefer passive victim hood and dance festivals when faced with
oppression. Clearly the historical, sociological and psychological literature
on the origins and implementation of genocide point to a passive population
that is discriminated against and lacks the means of self-defense.

For example,
the recent HBO film, Deacons for the
Defense indicated how African-Americans defended themselves successfully.
Oops, I’m into a lecture mode.

The
fundamental idea that the populace needs to be able to defend itself from the
extremes of government and the terrors of various radical groups (of various
political, ethnic and religious persuasions) is a philosophical and moral
principle that makes ramblings by the right about the left or the left about
the right really irrelevant.”

This led to a
PC response that included the following:

“......despite what I may misunderstand as
Glenn’s apparent view of the Second Amendment as something that transcends
ideology. “

I replied:

"And why
would you think you misunderstood me? Political elites of the left and right
usually become extreme and impose their whacky tyranny on the common folk. The
ideology of the tyranny may vary and lead to different groups being the
tyrants. The result is the same if you are not the elite. Thus, the US is
unique in some sense that a strong segment of the population does not believe
that the organized forces of the state are the sole depository of the means
needed to defend basic freedoms. That these segments are now spreading across
the 'ideological' barriers that so consume activists, academics and pundits is
quite a good thing.

Certainly as
a Jew on this campus, I have no doubt that factions of the left and right have
little use for my small slice of the 'ethnic/minority' pie."

This
interchange is seen by the majority of faculty and staff, including my bosses.
I received this reply from a female Art History Professor: “Glenn- I found your
discussion illuminating. Thanks for taking the time to write about the issue in
detail”

My PC
colleague – who is a good guy – opined that maybe the development of feminist
and gay gun rights supporters at Harvard, in other Boston gun clubs and
elsewhere is being fueled by the current administration’s views. The
observation is purely anecdotal and based on ‘gaydar’. And, IMHO, there is
nothing wrong with that. The potential for the defense against tyranny is the
goal. Whether your tyranny is my tyranny is for discussion protected by the 1st
and 2nd!I recently went to a meeting
of the Jewish faculty and students about an anti-Semitic incident and had the
chance of talking about - guess what! Another Jewish faculty member and I have
shot together. Now, not all see the light but slow steps are important.

The
separation of identifying firearms with necessarily being conservative is
useful. On some internet lists that is not seen and the correlation must be
1.00. Thus, the non-conservative gun rights advocate is usually denounced and
told that such views are not welcome. I think that such discussions couched in
terms of defending ourselves and freedom can be successful.

Subversion
continues. I recently taught a seminar on aggression. We discussed firearms
usage as part. We read articles that discussed the history of gun rights,
theories of violence, the downside of firearms, media violence, etc. Many of
the kids were towards the left. I posed a question: If some folks think that
abortion under Roe v. Wade is a fundamental right and that right was being
taken away, would you take up arms to defend it? Taking up arms would seem to
be antithetical to our common view of the Brie and Chablis American Left
(certainly, leftists do take up arms in other places but it is not part of the
political correct mantra in the USA). The Democratic left is for the most part
strongly antigun. One of my favorite, leftish students said that's a stumper.
Later, that week we had on campus, a noted Democratic leftish woman as a
speaker. You would see her on the tube all the time. My kid put that to her as
a question and the speaker was literally stumped. Another student in the class
told me that she was dead set against owning a firearm; however one of our
readings Gun Women by Stange and Oyster turned her thinking around.

At the end of
the semester, our students have to present their research project. My lab logo
as a picture of me taken at Karl Rehn’s AT class. I took the class just after
having had an accident and broken my wrist, ribs and badly sprained my ankle. I
have my arm in a cast up to just below my elbow. My ankle is one of those strap
up boots. I am holding one handed a Desert Eagle and look like quite the
warrior. All the students and faculty see it, every semester. The picture does
make me look fat (which I am – sigh).I
tell the class if I’m going to a match on the weekend.

Would I have
such freedom in other places? I have met progun scholars from other schools. A
Canadian friend finds that he does have some negative social feedback. Others
are respected at their workplace. I know that in Oregon and Texas, I had no
problem.

What do our
students think of gun rights? As a student project, we surveyed about 600
students in Oregon and Texas (at two liberal arts schools and two big state
schools) about gun rights. This is certainly not a representative sample but
given that liberal arts kids tend towards the liberal side, it is interesting.
Note that this project led to several presentations at the Southwestern
Psychological Association, National Council for Undergraduate Research and
American Society for Criminology – not hiding my focus. Here are some
interesting answers from the survey. These questions were asked Pre-NICS and
there was no attempt to explain the pros and cons of each possible side of a
question. Unlike most surveys, we asked more than just should guns be banned.

Do you think
there should be a ban on private ownership of handguns?

Yes31.7%No68.3%

Assuming
handgun ownership is allowed, do you think there should be registration or
licensing of handguns?

Yes96.8%No3.2%

Assuming
handgun ownership is allowed and separate from the issue of registration, do
you think there should be a waiting period before one can purchase a handgun?

Yes88.1%No11.9%

Do you possess
a handgun?Yes10.7%No89.3%9.

If not, do
you feel that one day you might want to possess a handgun?

Yes54.7%No45.3%

Other more
complicated questions indicated that the most important reasons for owning a
handgun were personal protection or perhaps a security/LEO job. A large
majority (70%) indicated that possibility of future government dictatorship was
not important. I think that conceptualization comes when one studies the issue
but it’s not on the radar screen of most folk. We think it is important.

So the
majority is against a ban but wants some type of registration. This is an
interesting aspect as most PC survey work simply asks if someone wants gun
control and then interprets that as wanting total bans and/or confiscations. However,
my student project was a touch more sophisticated and indicates that more than
50% will consider getting a handgun if they don’t have one now. You don’t hear
that usually. Remember though this is Texas and Oregon.More realistic surveys do handle this issue.
When most Americans ask for gun control, they usually mean that criminals don’t
have guns. Thus, they think checks and registration will prevent criminal
access (they don’t know the literature, nor is it usually presented to them).
However, clearly they think that law abiding citizens should have access to
firearms. I had a conversation with an older African-American woman in a night
class. She has a gun and sent her boy to Eddie Eagle class. However, she wants
a law that stops the gangbangers in her neighborhood from having easy access to
SKSs – a weapon of choice. That’s the conundrum that is not really dealt with
in polarized political debates.

We did a
similar survey of faculty. 52% were against a handgun ban. They were wildly in
favor of registration. 20% owned handguns but 80% of the non-owners did not
contemplate getting one. Parenthetically, there are lots of folks with the
shotgun in the closet for BGs. One guy has had a pistol grip pump 20 gauge in
his underwear drawer for the past 20 years, loaded but never fired (sigh).2.9% have CHLs or CCW permits. That’s not
far off from the state percentages in Oregon and TX – surprising.

Other faculty
fun. I have had several colleagues want to go to the range to learn how to
shoot. They want to know how guns work – they are shy about saying they want to
feel the inner warrior – we will see. Male faculty are funny, sometimes. If you
say that you are a shooter that challenges one’s position in the dominance
hierarchy, esp. if they are not shooters. They have to tell me that they shot a
gun or two. Two guys told me that they once shot a Colt 45 (a 1911) – and it
DAMNED NEAR TORE THEIR ARM OFF. Both these guys are over 6 feet and big. I’m a
midsized guy. I seem to have both my arms – and I’ve shot 1911s. What a
surprise!

Thus, I think
it is important, as said before, to have role models for the RKBA in schools.
While controversial, I think it is important to separate the RKBA from
necessary loyalty to one political viewpoint (currently the GOP). That’s what I
see myself as doing.

As a scholar,
there must be a reading list. So here we go.

Gender Issues:

Below, I’ve
collected a list of things that I’ve found about gender factors in firearms,
self-defense usage. When I could, I added a small summary. Basically,
researchers find that gun usage or even strong self defense is seen as atypical
for women and sometimes can be held against them in legal proceedings.The sets of books below are written from a
women’s perspective on gun use.They
are interesting to read. I’ve met Abigail Kohn and her book is great. She’s a
shooter.McCaughey is a very strong
advocate of women’s self-defense. She is a very theoretical feminist, so her
paradigm is quite different from the social conservative paradigm that is common
in the gun world. It makes the point that people can be strong from many
political viewpoints. Stange and Oyster’s book is a neat one also.As I said above, this book turned around an
antigun female student. I’ve met them also. Great people.

One thing
about some of the books about guns by women is interesting. I think most of the
books I list below are generally positive about gun usage.They have strong cases for gun use in
self-defense and positive examples of their use.However, some of them – for example, Homsher and Kelly do express
qualms about gun danger to society and present opinions from antigunners. This
has led some male critics in the gun press to savage them and focus on their
not so pro gun prose and some techy mistakes in the book. I wonder if this is
because the male gun mind – if such exists – thinks in only a black/white,
dichotomous world view about firearms usage. They are 2nd amendment purists and
can’t see a women’s point of view about the harm that firearms may cause. This
is an interesting gender split in cognitive styles.

One point in
Kelly’s book is that she mentions that women she met in gun classes can be
emotionally scarred by some sort of abuse and the trainer ended up in
pseudo-therapeutic roles sometimes.I
wonder if men trainers get this issue and are ready to deal with it?

GM: Mauser is
well known pro-RKBA scholar. I know him quite well. His article speaks to how
laws deprive women of rights for self defense and the general issues of bias
against women using firearms.

2)
Branscombe, N., & Owen, S.(1991).
Influence of gun ownership on social inferences about women and men.Journal of Applied Social Psychology,
21(19), 1567-1589.

A survey of
39 female and 39 male undergraduates revealed that the subjects believed that
women who owned handguns would possess masculine physical characteristics,
although they were not perceived as losing feminine body attributes. Women who
owned guns tended to be perceived as less likely to occupy female stereotypic
social roles, while men who owned a weapon were perceived as more likely to do
so. Men who owned a handgun were perceived as less likely to possess socially
desirable male stereotypic traits, although women with a handgun gained in this
respect. In a survey of 73 female and 78 male community members, the main
pattern of outcomes was replicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2003 APA, all
rights reserved

Examined the
hypothesis that females who use too many resistance strategies to avoid rape
may be judged more harshly than those who use more moderate or fewer resistance
strategies. Two experiments, involving 135 male and 139 female undergraduates,
were conducted. Exp 1 featured a stranger-rape scenario, and Exp 2, an
acquaintance-rape scenario. Results of both experiments supported the
hypothesis. Victims who displayed low resistance were also judged more harshly
than those who showed moderate resistance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2003
APA, all rights reserved)

“Despite
this, we are in no way suggesting that women should not attempt to prevent or
resist victimization attempts. Rather, we have contributed to the literature
indicating how cognitive processes influence judgments of victims.”

That’s an
important point. She’s not anti- but pointing out the processes involved. Some
folks don’t get it. They think if you have a negative finding about a gun or
self defense usage – then you are some kind of anti gun zealot. I got that a
bit with other study that in some circumstances gun type could be a negative in
court.

Two
experiments with 81 male and 81 female undergraduates examined the hypothesis
that gender stereotypes influence social inferences about homeowners who use a
gun to shoot an intruder. Male homeowners who shot incompetently were perceived
more negatively than were men who shot the intruder with competence. The
opposite trend was observed for female homeowners. The degree of acceptance of
the notion that guns provide their owners with protection moderated the social
judgments formed about homeowners who use weapons to defend their property.
Subjects for whom the event is inconsistent with their attitude-based
expectancies blamed stereotype-inconsistent homeowners more than gender
stereotype-consistent homeowners, particularly the skillful female shooters.
Subjects with relatively negative attitudes toward guns perceived the skillful
female shooters more positively than the other homeowners. (PsycINFO Database
Record (c) 2003 APA, all rights reserved)

GM: This is
really interesting and I would think that lawyers and instructors should alert
folks to this issue. We found a similar thing in our assault rifle study. Women
using them in a DGU really were judged more harshly. The issue is NOT that you
don’t defend yourself but be aware if you have to deal with cops, DAs and
lawyers.

Dole (2000,
p. 11) states: “Despite widespread support for strong images in of women in the
media, main mainstream film viewers and academic feminists alike have hesitated
to celebrate cinematic women with guns, even those who are upholders of law”.
Dole reviews the societal values and attitudes that speak against positive
aspects of women with atypical firepower.Even when women use guns, they must use them defensively – perhaps in a
maternal and protective role – to be seen as consistent with gender norms.

These are
major works on issues. Some are progun in orientation. Some have pros and cons.
Most are reasoned though and that’s important to know the thought on all sides
of an issue. A problem with folks can be a selection bias to only read what confirms
what they think.

Jacobs, James
B. (2004). CanGun Control Work? (Studies in Crime and Public Policy) Publisher:
Oxford University Press; New Ed edition (October 1, 2004)